🔥 “Unless I had the spirit of prayer, I could do nothing.” – Charles G. Finney Charles Grandison Finney (1792–1875) was an American evangelist, pastor and theologian whose preaching became one of the great forces of the Second Great Awakening. Born in Warren, Connecticut, on August 29, 1792, he trained for law and entered a legal office in Adams, New York. There the Bible began to trouble him. In October 1821, after days of conviction, Finney went into the woods to settle the matter with God. He came back a changed man. The lawyer laid down his ambition and soon began preaching Christ. His early campaigns swept through towns in western New York and later Rochester, New York City and beyond. Finney used what became known as the “new measures”: protracted meetings, direct appeals, public prayer for sinners and the anxious seat. Thousands professed conversion, though his methods provoked fierce opposition from other ministers. But beneath the public work stood prayer. In his own Memoirs Finney wrote exactly, “Unless I had the spirit of prayer I could do nothing.” He said that when he lost that spirit even for an hour, he found himself unable to preach with power or win souls. “Pray without ceasing” 1 Thessalonians 5:17. In 1835 Finney joined Oberlin, teaching theology and later serving as its second president from 1851 to 1865. He was an outspoken abolitionist and helped shape a college known for admitting Black students and women. His theology of human responsibility, sanctification and revival was influential, though some of his formulations on perfection and the atonement remain disputed among evangelicals. His Lectures on Revivals of Religion travelled widely and helped shape generations of evangelists. Finney continued teaching and preaching into old age and died in Oberlin on August 16, 1875. His books still circulate. His methods are still debated. But the burden behind them remains difficult to escape: revival cannot be manufactured by machinery when the men handling the machinery have ceased to pray. 🔥 — #CharlesFinney #Quoted #SpiritBroods #PrevailingPrayer #RevivalFire - @spiritbroods